New Lighting for 8-Pole LED Basketball Courts in California

Access Fixtures was recently contacted by the engineering manager at a public works department in California. The town’s park had a pair of basketball courts lit with eight 250w high pressure sodium (HPS) fixtures. When they were first installed, the HPS fixtures provided sufficient light, but that light had dwindled over time. After years of use, they were simply unable to provide the light the courts needed. The engineering manager wanted to improve light levels, reduce maintenance; he knew this meant switching to LED. The team at Access Fixtures helped him find the perfect luminaires for an 8-pole LED basketball court layout—here’s how.

The Project: Lighting 8-Pole LED Twin Basketball Courts in California

The two basketball courts fit into the same space as a standard full basketball court (94’ x 50’). The courts were used for about three hours a night, every night. Each of the existing 250w HPS fixtures was installed on its own 20-foot pole. The customer hoped to leave the poles in place—they were in fine condition and already had 120V electricity running into each of them. Dropping the number of poles or changing their location would mean digging up wires, re-pouring concrete, re-installing poles and more; the hassle and costs would change the scope of the entire project. This meant Access Fixtures needed to find eight LED fixtures that would provide a reasonable increase in light and be easily mounted to the existing poles.

Reviewing Every Option for the 8-Pole LED Twin Basketball Court

Access Fixtures has had tremendous success with the four-pole LED basketball court solution. Previous customers have been thrilled with the efficiency and consistency of these LED luminaires over time. The 378w High Output LED fixtures in the package are L70 rated for 100,000 hours and provide a stunning 53,172 lumens. It has become a foolproof solution for the kind of recreational play public parks hope to facilitate.

However, this customer needed an eight-pole solution; eight of these 378w luminaires would provide far too much light and be unnecessarily expensive. We had to explore some other options. Here are a few of the choices we had available to us:

Trimming the List to Find the Best LED Luminaire

At this point, making a decision was a simple process of elimination:

The 108w high output LED fixture is wonderfully efficient but simply didn’t provide the lumens this customer needed. We crossed it off the list.

The 378w high output LED fixture would simply be too bright (remember, we usually recommend this fixture in our four-pole package; the light from eight of these fixtures would be too extreme for recreational play). We crossed it off the list.

The 158w high output LED fixture provided similar lumen output as the HPS fixtures. Since people tend to perceive LED light to be “brighter” than that of HPS, the light levels might even seem better than the numbers suggest. However, we wanted to guarantee sufficient lumen output. We crossed it off the list.

This left us with the 189w High Output 16” LED Outdoor Flood Light. For this customer’s eight-pole, eight-fixture design, these luminaires would offer a sum total of 212,688 initial lumens and the same L70-rated lifetime at 100,000 hours as the 378w luminaires used in our four-court design. Also, because there were to be eight fixtures (not the standard four), the courts would have a very low max/min footcandle ratio. This means the light on the courts will be even and consistent across the entire playing area.

The existing HPS fixtures hadn’t provided sufficient light for a long, long time. To make sure there wasn’t too much light, we added 0–10v dimming capabilities to each luminaire. This came at a very low cost for our customer ($20.00), but would allow him to use the perfect amount of light and adjust it for particular occasions or applications.

This customer was able to affix the luminaires to the existing poles with simple slipfitter mounts, which made for easy, pain-free installation. To make this deal even sweeter, we gave the customer a discount on the cost of the fixtures and also took care of all shipping charges.

Need to Light a Sports Court? Contact Access Fixtures.

Whether your basketball court has eight poles, four poles, or no poles at all, the Access Fixtures team is here and ready to get you the package you need. We’re glad to break down the specifications and details of every option. Give us a call at (800) 468-9925 and we’ll get your project going!